The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell Page B

things and moaned about the way everything just jumped out of his pockets.
    â€˜It’s funny’, she said crossly, ‘how you manage never to lose my key.’
    Fowler was a very thin man of forty, his hair the faded reddish-gold hers had been before she started tinting it, his face like an old handbag, an amalgam of pockets and dents and bloated pores, his teeth brown as tree bark and the stubble on chin and cheeks as white as an old man’s. That afternoon he was wearingthe kind of clothes that are immediately recognisable as having previously belonged to someone else, each garment perhaps to several former owners. He was sitting in her living room, smoking a cigarette he must have scrounged from somewhere, his decaying trainers smelling like Gorgonzola cheese.
    He didn’t greet her. He seldom did but went straight into whatever came into his head. ‘When you got the money from that old woman, I don’t know why you didn’t get a bigger flat. I mean, with two bedrooms. Then I could have stayed here properly and not had to doss down on the sofa.’
    â€˜That’s why,’ said Marion.
    Fowler showed no resentment. Her reply was precisely what he had anticipated. ‘I wish you’d get married. If you married someone with a bit of money you could move into his place and leave this for me. When we were little kids, or you were a big kid and I was a little one, you said something to me I’ve never forgotten. It was so touching, it was so
nice
. You said, “I love you, Fowler. I’ll always take care of you.” You were about eight and I was four.’
    â€˜You say things like that when you’re eight,’ said Marion. ‘Besides, you were a nice-looking little boy. You had curls, not exactly golden, but curls. You were sweet. You’re not very sweet now.’
    Fowler was silent, thinking of his misfortunes and how the world always owed him a living. He couldn’t remember when he had ever had any money. Real money, that is. If he had even a small amount he usually managed to lose it. Only today he’d asked a woman for fifty pence to get himself a cup of tea and she’d given it to him. She’d actually given him fifty pence. But somewhere between Edgware Road tube station and the La Marquise café it had fallen through a hole in his pocket.
    â€˜Is there anything to eat?’ he asked.
    â€˜Only sardines,’ said his sister, ‘and some Brussels sprouts but they’re a week old. I haven’t had time to go shopping. Some of us work, you know.’
    Fowler stared glumly into space, scratching his head. ‘People like you don’t seem to realise that begging is work. Very hard work. You’re outdoors in all weathers, you can never relax, you never take a break. You’ve got to be polite all the time, you’ve got to be humble. If you speak your mind you’re done for. And there’s nothing of what you’d call job satisfaction. Even in Piccadilly or Bond Street you can stand about for three or four hours and those rich bitches’ll walk past you on their way into jewellery shops. And then the Prime Minister has the nerve to tell people not to give to beggars. As if they needed telling. I think I’ll make myself sardines on toast.’
    Marion followed him into the kitchen, not to help with the preparation of his meal but to stop him raiding her liquor supplies.
    â€˜Do you remember when we were kids you used to have to open sardine tins with a key stuck through that ring thing? And the key always broke and you had to put something stronger into the ring. I used the poker. I bashed myself in the mouth and knocked one of my front teeth out. You must remember.’
    â€˜You were always accident prone.’
    â€˜Can I have a drink?’
    â€˜No, you can’t.’
    â€˜Come on, Marion. Don’t be like that. I tell you what. If I can have a drink and a couple of aspirins –